COLUMBUS — Out of the four fifth-grade student recipients of the 2016 Agriculture is Cool Scholarship, two of them live right here in our area.
Anna Elementary Student Avery Shoffner, and Versailles Elementary Student Levi Barga were honored Thursday with a $500 scholarship for their interest in agriculture.
Shoffner and Barga were among dozens of students who submitted essays or creative stories about the “Agriculture is Cool” education program held during the 2016 Ohio State Fair in conjunction with the Ohio Department of Agriculture, Ohio Farm Bureau and Ohio’s agricultural commodity groups.
Fourth-graders get in free to the Ohio State Fair and are given the chance to fill out a passport card. They take their card to all the different booths at the fair and learn about many aspects of agriculture, said Janelle Mead, deputy director of the Ohio Department of Agriculture.
“Agriculture is Ohio’s top industry and it brings about $105 billion to the Ohio economy each and every year,” she said. “So it’s important to get kids thinking about this important industry early, and teaching them about all the different careers they could have in it.”
Shoffner wants to be an agriculture teacher some day.
To fourth-graders who want to participate in the program next year she said, “It takes a lot of courage to walk around (at the state fair), you just have to do it so you can try to win.”
General Manager of the Ohio State Fair Virgil Strickler spoke with students Thursday about the great opportunities fairs offer.
“Students like Avery and Levi went through the corn and wheat exhibits, the dairy exhibits, the poultry and rabbit barns, and many others,” he said. “As you grow up it’s very important you learn as much as you can about agriculture, because we have to be able to feed our great state, great country, and the world. The more you learn about agriculture, you can be a part of it in so many ways.”
The “Agriculture is Cool” program has been recognized by the International Association of Fairs and Expositions as the best special or specific agricultural education exhibit, event or program for the fairgoing public for fairs with annual attendance between 500,001 and 1 million.
